Since they began play at Citi Field, the Mets have a .731 O.P.S. at home, .704 on the road. That is an O.P.S. advantage of 27 points, compared with 37 for the National League over all. That is a negligible difference, largely caused by the recent offensive woes. (Take out the previous homestand, and the Mets’ advantage is virtually identical to that of the league.)
But Mets pitchers have a huge edge over the typical advantage pitchers have at home. From 2009-11, Mets pitchers have allowed a . 696 O.P.S. at Citi Field and a .788 O.P.S. on the road. That is a 92-point advantage, compared with 42 points for that of the league. The Mets pitchers’ 50-point O.P.S. advantage is greater than the difference between Ben Zobrist’s good 2011 season for Tampa Bay and Jose Reyes’s great one for the Mets.
Any changes to, say, the outfield walls would affect both the offense and pitching at Citi Field. But the current setup appears to have little to no effect on the Mets’ offense, while providing a huge advantage to the pitching staff.
Statistically, the Mets have a marked home-field advantage. But if they want more offense, they need to field a better offensive team.
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1. Harveys WallbangersAgree with the sentiment. Get better players.
As I've said before, they don't need more offense generally at Citi Field. But they need to make it fair for right-handed power hitters. Major surgery isn't needed, but tinkering is justified.
David Wright: 2011 home OPS .789, road OPS .773. 2010 home OPS .880, road OPS .834. 2009 home OPS .812, road OPS .859.
So Wright, for instance, hasn't had a home deficit here since 2009- and that .812 home OPS isn't exactly a problem.
And Jason Bay? 2011 home OPS .802, road OPS .618. 2010 home OPS .830, road OPS .680.
The right-handed power hitters, even if you drill down, haven't been victimized by Citi Field, either.
You are assuming that dealing with Citi Field as their home park has no impact on their overall performance. I don't happen to share that assumption.
No they don't. They just need to not build their team around RH power hitters.
In the long run, Citi Field should give them a big competitive advantage by protecting their pitchers from wear and tear over the course of the season.
Hell, I wish the Yankees were smart enough to realize this and had built YS3 with dimensions similar to YS 1, or at least early-YS 2.
Put in a huge LCF and CF, stock up on LH hitters and LH SPs and feast on home field advantage. Worked for decades.
That should be exactly the Mets strategy in Citifield. If anything, they should bring RF in, and make it a homer-porch for LHB.
What exactly leads you to that conclusion, if their right-handed power hitters hit better at Citi Field than they do abroad?
I disagree with this for a couple reasons. First, you should not be tinkering with the dimensions of the field just because of your present roster. Citifield will be there long after these guys are retired. Second, Bay+Wright does not represent anything like a "potential source of home field advantage." Bay is toast and is totally irrelevant. Wright is a good right handed hitter, but so what? He's just one guy. Lots of teams have a good right-handed power hitter.
Frankly I'm surprised that Sam is so wedded to the idea that Citifield has a significant psychological impact on the players that carries over into their K numbers, road performance etc. That has always seemed like a WFAN-caller type of argument to me. I think the idea that Bay's collapse or Wright's struggles are due to the deep power alleys is nonsense.
I remember that there was talk about Comerica Park being impossibly large. Juan Gonzalez hit 22 homeruns there, bookended by 35+ in Texas and Cleveland. But Miguel Cabrera is doing fine. The Giants have won a lot of games despite their insane power alleys.
Furthermore, as other people have pointed out, a quirky park actually creates the best opportunity to create a homefield advantage. The large park plays to the strengths of Reyes and other gap hitters - and it absolutely plays to the strength of flyball pitchers. The extra 3 homeruns you buy Wright by lowering the fence might ruin RA Dickey.
That would certainly protect their pitchers . . .
I'll say it one more time: I have nothing whatsoever against keeping Citi Field a pitchers' park. Modest changes to give right-handed power hitters a reasonable chance, however, are (a) completely consistent with that, (b) good for the team as currently constituted, and (c) simply more fair from a competitive POV. All I want to do is give really good right-handed power hitters some place in the park they can aim for where if they hit what is a bona fide home run, they get it, without it having to be basically a tape measure job. I acknowledge that it seems pretty obvious the Mets are going to go a lot further than that, and that is something I don't support.
EDIT: Never mind. Dickey had a no-no for 6.1. Now the Phillies have three straight hits and a 1-0 lead. Sigh.
Who cares if your pitchers give up a few more cheapies to RF?
The idea is you get 5 or 6 LH in the lineup that can exploit it, while your non-tailor made oponent's lineup has 2 or 3.
Did you ever notice how the Yankees have 6 LH or switch-hitters in their regular lineup? Do you think that's an accident?
The answer is not to optimize Jason Bay's stats. Go trade Jason Bay for Adam Dunn. (just an example).
They moved in the fences at Comerica in 2003 though.
I agree with Sam, but I also admit that part of this is because it sure as hell seems like Wright has been hurt by the park. I know we covered that in a different thread, so I'm not looking to bring it up again. But I will also admit I am emotionally attached to Wright as a fan in a way unlike someone like Bay, for instance. It really does bother me that we had a guy who was on a HOF career trajectory through age 25, and has turned into more of a good player from there, while also conceding it's far from a lock that moving in the fences will do anything to change the kind of player he is at this point. So part of my feeling is probably tied to that.
And just to reiterate what Sam said, I'm in no way advocating for turning Citi into a bandbox. I agree with the argument that you want a pitchers park to allow you to nurture your young pitchers.
The Mets kind of have to figure something out with Lucas Duda. He can definitely hit, but playing the guy in RF is going to be a disaster I think. They will probably end up giving up on Bay before too long next year, but they need a glove in RF, even if they do bring the fences in a bit. Fangraphs has the Mets at -60 fielding runs; I know you can't put too much stock in single season UZR, but they are so far behind everyone else (The orioles are at -47, and the next closest team is at -32) that there is surely something to it.
(I should note this is more in reference to Yankee Stadium than the "Save Our Righties" campaign with the Mets. I don't really know enough about the issue to make any argument about how legitimate the gripe is, but in a theoretical sense I wouldn't have a problem with a team adjusting their park because no right hander had hit a HR there in 12 years. I'm not entirely sure where I'd draw the line.)
I wonder who blinks first in that hypothetical trade offer.
Bay is still somewhat playable, and most importantly, has only 2 years left on his deal (assuming he doesn't hit his vesting option, which if he contines to suck he will. And Dunn playing OF in Citi? No thanks.
The point is that you contradicted yourself. The way the Yankees can tailor their roster & line-up to their park does give them some advantages, but protecting their pitchers from abuse is clearly NOT one of them, and it never has been.
A team can tailor its team to its park without doing it exactly the way the Yankees do. A short porch? No thanks. A big outfield all around is just fine with me, keeping with the tradition the Mets have always had to build the team around great pitching staffs, the kind that marked the 1969 and 1986 teams. That's how I hope the next great Mets team takes shape, around Niese and Harvey and Wheeler and Mejia and Familia, if all goes well. Making the park simply fair for RH power -- something more like Shea, is all I want -- is hardly that much to ask. And it's all I'm saying.
Yankee Stadium, Jr.? Um, no.
Didn't the old Yankee stadium generally play as a pretty solid pitchers park?
Though one question I'd have for Snapper is why you'd suggest bringing in the RF fence and building around lefty power and lefty pitching as opposed to the other way around? (bringing in the LF fence instead; and just for the record I'm not suggesting the Mets should make LF anything close to Yankee Stadium, just asking) The only thing I can think is there are fewer lefty pitchers than righties, so if you go something along the Yankee stadium route, you can take more of an advantage with your pitchers because the
other teams are likely to have fewer lefty pitchers. But there are more left handed hitters than right handed hitters I believe.
Edit: Howard, my point is more along the lines that playing in Citi Field has had an adverse effect on Wright no matter where he hits. He has become a worse hitter, period. It is interesting that he's hit better at Citi the last 2 years, though his power has taken a hit. His isolated power has been higher on the road every year since moving to Citi. THe main difference seems to be he draws more walks at home, much more walks. He's drawn nearly 60 more walks at home than on the road since 2009. Any ideas on that? I don't care about Bay at all, and haven't really said anything about him.
Maybe in the long run, but through 75 games at home and 81 on the road, I find little evidence that Citi Field has made much difference on Mets' pitcher workload in 2011:
ERA Pit/IP Pit/BF BF/IP
HOME 3.9 16.2 3.7 4.3
AWAY 4.5 16.3 3.7 4.4
If you look at the Mets' 15 opponents that they have played at home and on the road this season, against 7 opponents Mets' Pit/BF is less at Citi than away and against 7 opponents Mets' Pit/IP is less at Citi than away.
On a team-by-team basis:
Mets pitchers had both fewer Pit/IP and fewer Pit/BF at Citi against ATL, FLA, HOU, SDP and STL.
Mets pitchers had both fewer Pit/IP and fewer Pit/BF on the road against ARI, COL, LAD, PIT, SFP and WSN.
Data Source: B-R P-I
Because every team has lots of righties. It's harder to distinguish yourself b/c RH SP and bench players are so common.
but protecting their pitchers from abuse is clearly NOT one of them, and it never has been.
Didn't the old Yankee stadium generally play as a pretty solid pitchers park?
Old Yankee Stadium was generally a big pitchers park (look at the old PFs. multi-years hover in the ~90-97 range, very rarely above 100), and the team usually had stellar defense.
There's a reason all those mediocre arms came to NY and had great seasons.
Yankee Stadium, Jr.? Um, no.
If emulating the Yankees pains you that much, think of it as Ebbets Field jr. Might as well go all the way with what Fred started.
David Wright, home and road home runs, 2009-2001:
Home: 22
Road: 31
David Wright, home and road slugging, year by year, 2009-2011:
2009: Home -- .434; Road -- .458
2010: Home -- .496; Road -- .508
2011: Home -- .416; Road -- .450
Every year since Citi Field opened, David Wright has hit for more power, including but not limited to home runs, on the road. Since the topic here is the park's effect on power, I think that's the most relevant thing to look at. And I think the impact on his overall power is also noticeable, because even Wright's power on the road isn't what it was pre-Citi Field.
But look, much as everyone assumes my take on this is because I want David Wright to be the David Wright he used to be, that's really not it. He is symbolic of the issue, or a really good indicator of it, but he's not The Point. The point is -- and I guess it's just a philosophical issue here -- that I think the stadium's design has a bug: it doesn't give a particular kind of player a fair shot at competing with his skill set. He doesn't need an equal shot -- not every park does, or should, represent a level playing field for all kinds of players. But every park should give some chance. Citi Field needs a moderate tweak for the sake of changing this flaw. That's all.
I'd say the statistics in #3 are as uninformative as the statistics in the original column. The issue is whether the team should adjust its outfield dimensions. Road statistics are a secondary, perhaps tertiary, concern. At best. The numbers to present would involve estimating how the team's pitchers and hitters would have done at Citi Field over the last three seasons if the stadium had different dimensions.
To your point that hitting at Citi Field has affected Wright on an overall basis, here are the same splits for full seasons at Shea:
David Wright, home run splits, 2005-2008:
Year Home Road
2005 11 16
2006 13 13
2007 16 14
2008 21 12
David Wright, slugging splits, 2005-2008:
Year Home Road
2005 .491 .555
2006 .532 .530
2007 .586 .512
2008 .618 .455
Wright's road SLG since 2009 is not wholly inconsistent with his 2007-2008 numbers and the 2005-2008 trend, but the reversal of the home trend is clear.
Source: B-R
It is claimed that the Mets are struggling to hit at Citi Field. So seeing that the same group is hitting better at Citi Field than on the road, as far as I can tell, is the best way to objectively evaluate that effect. Pretending we know how they'd hit at a different version of Citi Field, frankly, makes no sense, and presumably requires the assistance of Doc Brown. (And he'd probably be concerned about the effects such an effort would have on Marty's family.)
As far as Wright's slugging percentage being a bit higher on the road, isn't the obvious takeaway that his on-base percentage is considerably higher at home? Getting to the same OPS with more OBP than SLG isn't a defect of the park, or of Wright.
In his age 28 season (which is arguably at or near the age at which most batters peak) Wright's home OBP is back to 2005-2006 levels and his road OBP is at career lows. Wright has gotten worse overall, at home and on the road, since playing at Citi Field. The argument is whether it is causation or merely correlation (and maybe instead caused by the concussion and its physical/psychological after-effects).
David Wright 2005-2011 OBP splits:
Year Home Road
2005 .385 .392
2006 .378 .385
2007 .435 .400
2008 .437 .345
2009 .434 .458
2010 .383 .326
2011 .372 .323
It's not about pretending, it's about estimating effects from a change in field dimensions. If the Mets announce that in 2012 the dimensions will be 200 feet down the lines and 250 feet to dead center, folks will begin to estimate the effects. By your dismissive logic which suggests statistical ignorance, these people would make no sense.
But is that a reasonable park? If someone had told you that this would be the way Citi Field would play before it was opened, wouldn't you say it was a design defect, not a feature? I don't mind a bit if the park plays to the disadvantage of right-handed power hitters, and the Mets respond by building a team that de-emphasizes that kind of talent. But a park can be too extreme, and in my view Citi Field is in this particular respect.
To be honest, I find the status quo bias here a little bit odd. It's a three year old park. It's not the Green Monster we're talking about, with decades of history to protect it from those who would alter its dimensions. The shape of Citi Field are so NOT written in stone that (at most) there should be only the slightest burden of persuasion placed on those who would advocate a change, especially if only moderate changes are being called for.
I love Dan's ZIPS, for instance. But I don't even think Dan would maintain that his 2009 projections are more accurate than the actual 2009 statistics.
Basically, if Wright can't hit it out to LF or RCF, then he changes his hitting style to compensate. And, for whatever reason, Wright did make a big change to his hitting style with his Ks spiking. Any changes he made to adjust to Citi are also going to effect (possibly negatively) his road numbers.
David Wright was a better overall hitter before he started playing at Citi. Whether any of that decline is due to Citi is unknown. I'm not sure I'd put the park at the top of the list of suspects but I can't rule it out.
See, the problem is, that's not the question. Of course I'll be interested in how potential changes could affect the Mets going forward. And we have no actual data about the future. So best available information is well-constructed estimates.
But what just happened? We don't have to estimate.
If the question is whether Citi Field has prevented the Mets from succeeding offensively from 2009-present, answering that question is accomplished by seeing how the Mets performed at Citi Field, and how that same team performed at other environments. What would a projection of an alternate Citi Field be? It would be estimated data of Wright performing at an environment other than Citi Field. How is that even as instructive as seeing his actual performance at Citi Field and stadiums that aren't Citi Field?
Does this clear up my thinking in the matter? Your question interests me; your answer just doesn't answer the questions raised about the past/present, while actual data from the past/present sheds light on that.
I will not sit idly by and be cast as some kind of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
To me the question is about how much has Citi Field impacted the team. The alternatives aren't revealed by looking at the team's road performance, they are seen by estimating how the team would likely have performed if the stadium had different dimensions. I mean, for all we know reducing certain dimensions by 15 feet would actually enhance the performance of Mets hitters and have minimal impact on the pitchers. Maybe not. The point is that home/road splits don't shed light on how potential changes would affect Mets hitters and pitchers.
We can agree to disagree. I think if you can't reasonably conclude that the park has negatively affected Met hitters- and I don't think the evidence supports that it has- it becomes far less important to "fix" the ballpark.
By comparison, efforts to estimate how changes to the park will affect totals is highly speculative. They will be useful, but far less conclusive. And they answer a different question from the one generally posed about Citi Field right now (along with the piece I wrote).
If you want to tell me that is is a "narrow, largely unhelpful" look at your question, so be it. But I wasn't answering your question.
You know what's really ridiculous? The way you persist in calling a spot that's merely off-center an "alley," while comparing its distance to those of actual alleys elsewhere. And what makes it extra-special is that about half of major league parks have a similar off-center section, requiring that this preposterous redefinition apply to only one park, lest your claims of its unique unfairness be undermined.
So that's a "maybe" on my proposal, right?
If you were a talented free agent position player and figured you might have two more contracts as a big leaguer, would you sign with the Mets for the same money you could get from say the Phillies (band box) or Nationals (neutral park)?
I'm not Howard, so feel free to ignore this, but talented free agents aren't coming to the Mets, who are busy racing to the bottom so as to satisfy the Wilpons' desperate attempt to hold onto the club; not even if they're slap hitters and the fences are two hundred feet from home plate. And they're certainly not accepting the same offer from the Mets they could get from another team unless NYC itself is an irresistable lure.
At this points the Mets are as appealing a FA destination as the Royals have been for the past decade. Two years ago, before the worst of the Wilpons finances came to light, the Mets had to grossly overpay in dollars and years merely to get a FA LFer entering his decline phase to play for them. They couldn't even get Bengie F. Molina to play at Citi. The chances the Mets will be significant players in the FA market this offseason are zero.
At this points the Mets are as appealing a FA destination as the Royals have been for the past decade. Two years ago, before the worst of the Wilpons finances came to light, the Mets had to grossly overpay in dollars and years merely to get a FA LFer entering his decline phase to play for them. They couldn't even get Bengie F. Molina to play at Citi. The chances the Mets will be significant players in the FA market this offseason are zero.
You pretty much summed up how I feel. Feel free to take this as my position, too.
In the long-term? I think if the Mets are a successful club who offer the most money, they'll get free agents. And the size of the left field wall won't have anything to do with it.
You sort of answered the second question, but I was asking about an MLB position player's willingness to play half their games in a park that drastically suppresses home runs. Do you think this matters, or does not matter, to the typical MLB hitter?
This is not a negative.
Which they never will be as long as there's that pinstriped monster across town. The Mets cannot ever get a free agent that the Yankees are interested in. Why do we sign the washed-up likes of Jason Bay, Luis Castillo, Pedro Martinez? That's all that's left after Satan's Pajamas gobble up the Teixeiras and Grandersons and Mussinas. The one solidly successful FA the Mets have acquired in ever was Beltran, and that was only because the Yankees were full in the OF with Bernie Williams still productive at the time.
Park size would be a minor factor for me. ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, I'd prefer to play for the team in the hitters park. I'll put up better numbers in the hitters park, but my agent's smart enough to push my case no matter where I play, so it's not a significant concern. And, of course, all things are never equal. At this point in the franchise, even though I grew up a fan of the team, there's no way I'd sign with the Mets if the offers were comparable, even if I was guaranteed the Mets were going to imitiate the dimensions of any other park. Why would I (assuming), an attractive FA position player, join a franchise with no prospects for the forseeable future? If the Mets offered me 5/90 and a regular contender offered me 5/80, I don't think I'd think very long. I loathe dysfunctional families and organizations.
Weren't the Yankees interested in Beltran?
Didn't Beltran's agent practically beg the Yankees to take an interest in him? They didn't even bother to have a dinner with him and went with Randy Johnson instead.
Maybe I was just thinking it made so much sense for the Yankees to go after Beltran I just assumed they did.
Is there a specific formula you had in mind? One thing I've learned from studying park factors is that there really is no reliable way to take a change in fence distance and fence size and predict the resulting impact on offense. This is actually a very well known problem in the Diamond Mind community: in DMB, the only way to adjust a park factor is to adjust the factor itself, since we have no reliable, accurate method of taking park dimensions and turning them into park factors.
I guess you could come up with an all-inclusive, historically accurate formula to do such a thing -- but you would have to have access to a now nonexistent database of historical park fiddling, as well as a reliable method of computing park factors entirely independent of league context. To my knowledge, we don't really have that ability right now. That's why cross-era play is so frustrating in simulations that use historic park factors, as you've got to figure out how, say, 1908 Exposition Park would play in year X given that the other teams in the league are playing with stadiums from entirely different eras -- and we're really screwed if we try to bring its fences in by 10 feet.
The best bet we have is to compare home and road offensive production. After all, that's how the park factors are created in the first place.
Getting back to the subject, I think the Mets are much better off dealing with the current, known Citi park effects than fiddling things around and trying to react again later.
The answer is, in my opinion, of course, if the Mets offer the most money and are a successful team. Realistically, if they offer the most money, they'll get most guys, period.
The truth is, regarding the Yankees, we just have no idea whether the Mets can compete with the Yankees for a player. It has never happened. During the era of free agency, the Mets simply never tried.
The Yankees had to make a choice between Johnson and Beltran and chose Johnson.
He's really clever that way - just ask him.
I don't think it matters very much for most hitters. I can't imagine that there's some hitter saying "I love everything about the Mets, from the contract they're offering to the strength of their team to the relationship I think I'll have with their manager, but I just can't risk hitting fewer home runs." Perhaps if you're a very self-aware hitter than knows your contracts come pretty much exclusively from your power numbers, and you're trying to maximize your next contract.
Still, if it does, then it should make it similarly easier to sign FA pitchers, which should even things out. If the park is really that dramatic (and I really don't believe that it is), then pitchers should be bending over backwards to pitch here.
I wouldn't change a thing about Citifield. I'd just change how I built my team to take advantage of it.
For the team, maybe, but not for the player. I think it will matter to some players, and it likely will influence some players' decisions, either as a free agent, or if they have a no trade clause and can veto trades to certain clubs.
To make an analogy from another sport, suppose in soccer the size of the goal could vary from team to team. If a team decided to have a very narrow goal, because of the way they wanted to play or for whatever reason, do you think that would influence their ability to entice a quality striker to their team? Go ahead, just tell them that even though your chances to score will be significantly reduced, the other team has to shoot on the same narrow goal, so it all evens out. I suspect some % of potential transfer candidates would just say "you have fun with that narrow goal, I'll go play for ____ where I have a better chance to score goals.", because you know, some soccer players' enjoyment of the game is tied up in their ability to score, just as no doubt some baseball players derive a big part of their job satisfaction out of hitting the ball out of the park.
I wouldn't say that it doesn't matter to a single player, but I think the number that would really care would be very, very small, and I think it would be fairly low on the list of priorities (certainly well behind the contract offered, the quality of the team, and the personality of the manager).
To make an analogy from another sport, suppose in soccer the size of the goal could vary from team to team. If a team decided to have a very narrow goal, because of the way they wanted to play or for whatever reason, do you think that would influence their ability to entice a quality striker to their team?
Perhaps, but that team should then have an easier time signing the best goalie and great defenders.
I don't care much about how attractive the Mets are to a player that is a bad fit for their home park. I'd rather they not sign those players anyway.
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